‘a room...’:It is perhaps worth saying at this point that this is the only set used in ‘Arcadia’. As the action on stage develops, the objects and properties of the set are moved, added to, used by the characters of the two different time frames. And - is this pretentious? - the single set comes to stand, as it were, for the World. We inhabit the same world as that lived in by people in 1800; it’s just that the objects have been shifted around and added to. History is the process by
which objects are accumulated (and lost). But there are two different times involved in the staging. I don’t mean the obvious difference between 1809 and Now, but call it ‘natural’ History, in which 1809 is followed by 1810 and so on to the present day, and ‘theatrical’ History, in which Act One, scene one (1809) is followed by scene two (the present day). It is in theatrical time that characters inherit the objects, left by the previous scene. The similarities and differences of ‘natural’ time and theatrical time allows Stoppard to play with concepts of Time, but also with the nature of theatricality. ‘the typical English park of the time..’
(note under construction) ‘separately occupied’ Contrast how we first see the two characters here with how they appear in the last moments of the play-waltzing. Their ‘story’ is one of coming together. (Except, of course it isn’t - due to what we know- Thomasina’s death. It remains at the end only a potential-like many of the strands in the story). ‘aged 13’ At the beginning of the play, Thomasina is 13years 10 months - that is, still a girl- and Septimus 22 - a young man; at the end Thomasina will be 17 years and 11 months - a young woman, and
Septimus, 25 - still a young man (well, at my age he seems so). This allows a fundamental change in their relationship. And it leads onto a nice point about Time: although we live in the same flow of Time as others - as measured by the clock - the same period of Time has radically different consequences for different people; Thomasina by the end is in some sense a different person - having gone through puberty, she has different status, feelings, possibilities, while Septimus is much as he was before. ‘open book’ Note the ease with which these characters move between science and literature. This will not be true of the present day characters, who will seem like members of the ‘two culture’ divide between Science and Arts. (The phrase ‘two culture’ derive from a famous speech by C P Snow - lamenting the modern division of disciplines and the partiality of individual knowledge) Relate to the argument between Valentine and Bernard in Act Two, scene five. Of course at another level, ‘Arcadia’ as a piece of literature dealing with scientific ideas is itself trying to bring the two cultures together. ‘a tortoise’ The tortoise deseves a little essay of his own, I think. (note to be constructed) ‘carnal embrace’ This - certainly if it follows some moments of silence on stage should surprise. It is not what the audience expects. It is certainly not what Septimus expects! This opening note can lead to a consideration of two characteristics of the play as a whole: Stoppard’s playing with/comically upsetting expectations, and the contrast/relation between academic pursuits and sex. ‘a side of beef’ You must imagine a pause -of surprise, of embarassment - before Septimus answers. This is not a question he expects from
Thomasina, given his pupil’s age, and his role in relation to her. But we also discover he has a more particular reason to be self-conscious about questions about this particular topic. But the answer he gives is both full of aplomb and absurd. The comedy here, as is true of elsewhere in Arcadia is the audience’s imagination of the ideas now planted in the other character’s mind: dialogue is funny not because of what it shows about the speaker’s mind, but because of the imagined mental response of the person addressed. ‘Is that all’ There’s something touching about the ‘innocent’ disappointment of this response. Sex will be the great disruptive force throughout the play: if only it was merely this. At one level the play is about two ‘almost’ discoveries that Thomsina ‘almost’ makes: what sexual elationa are, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The pathos of her fate is she makes neither. Which is meant to be the more moving loss? ‘..well-hugged, an embrace of grouse..’ Septimus has recovered from his blip of
embarasment; we can tell by his play on words, for his own amusement (‘hugged’, instead of ‘hung’ for venison, ‘embrace’ instead of ‘brace’ for grouse - am I stating the obvious?) The comedy will develop because Septimus will repeatedly think himself in the clear, overcoming some embarassment - but it will go on getting worse. ‘caro,
carnis..’ I guess it is appropriate that ‘flesh’ should be a feminine word given tha nature of Septimus’s particular interest in that substance as revealed in this scene. ‘Is it a sin?’ Thomasina’s question reflects the conventional side of her education so far - that is ‘religious’ and ‘moralistic’: an appropriate question for a well-educated girl of 13 in 1809. However, it is striking how little such conventional ‘Christian’ morality informs the behaviour of the characters and , indeed, the attitude of the play itself. This is Arcadia, rather than Eden. (For a view of this distinction, see the page on ‘Arcadia’) ‘..the sin of
Onan..’ ‘And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother’s wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother. And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pas, when he went in unto his brother’s wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother. And the thing which he did displeased the LORD: wherefore he slew him also.’ (Genesis,chap.38, 7-9) This is what Thomasina is reminded of from her Bible classes by Septimus’s own perhaps unwise but clicheed Biblical reference.
(Septimus is thinking of Mark 4, 3-9 or Matthew 13,3-9). Thomasina’s Bible classes must have been peculiarly thorough - since the ‘sin of Onan’ refers to that individual sexual practice which is traditionally more thought to be punished by blindness than by direct and immediate slaying by the Lord. The comic point is that Septimus - far from evading the discussion of sex - has been pitched back straight into it - perhaps even more embarassingly so. ‘Fermat’s last theorem..’Notice how Septimus introduces Maths as a desperate move to avoid the embarassments of talking about sex. (So, a kind of contrast is set up: the orderly though inhuman world of Mathematics, and the disorderly realm of human sexual relations). Septimus of course knows that there is no chance of Thomasina proving this theorem - it would be generally taken as the classic example of an impossible proof. (Ironically - or perhaps fortuitously - the year of Arcadia’s first performance saw the theorem actually proved by Andrew Wiles - although with Mathematics way beyond what even Stoppard allows Thomasina to intuit in the play. Although the point to make about Thomasina is that she isn’t particularly intimidated by the problem - although she does concede that ‘it is difficult..you will have to show me how.’ For a more full account of the nature of Fermat’s theorem, and related external links, go direct to Fermat’s Last Theorem page. |
